Inclined To Inspire

Under a heavy police presence Thursday night, Cottonwood junior Avea Van Der Beek returned for the Lady Colts' first 4A state tournament game after a 9-day absence and made us proud.

First Things First» With a handful of law enforcement officers guarding each of the entry points to the Cottonwood High School gymnasium, a girls basketball game was played Thursday, February 22. 

This is the story I can't write about at my day job covering the team but it's important enough to write about, right now, and risk my job telling it. 

It's important enough to explain that as human beings we have a tendency to overreact to and overthink something as trivial as somebody's hairdo and outward appearance. 

I suppose that's what started it all; that Avea Van Der Beek happened to have features that made some believe she was actually someone else. That the junior happened to play basketball well enough as Cottonwood's leading scorer that a few people would assume, since the Colts haven't been this good at girls’ basketball in decades, that she was actually more like a man—”a wolf playing in sheep's clothing” is how I heard one person describe this 16-year-old. 

But all that assuming did was ignite hate and misinformation that spread like some wildfire, for when one burns it does so in such a way that nothing is spared. When a fire burns the people fighting the blaze—in this case school and district administrators—will do everything in their power to control the direction of the flames so that a small portion of it might actually spare the structure and leave some part of it standing. 

Hidden Agenda

» That Avea Van Der Beek was merely a high school junior playing basketball at Cottonwood had little effect on the person insinuating such hurtful things—identified as Utah State School board member Natalie Cline. 

As is wont in a small community like Murray’s, somebody saw Cline’s post and alerted the family of Van Der Beek, who took action with this snap judgment on their 16-year-old daughter and alerted Cottonwood High administration who alerted Granite School District officials who then alerted local law enforcement.

But words can and do hurt; the resultant unwanted media attention affected Van Der Beek, whose numbers on the basketball court suffered.

No media rounds by first the district, the Utah State School Board of Education and by Van Der Beek's parents themselves prevented this fire from spreading; in three games the past three weeks, the junior's numbers dipped from 12 points to six to finally, this 4A second round state tournament game Thursday versus Desert Hills. 

But as the second half wore on Thursday, and law enforcement officers stood sentry at each of the four high school gym’s entry ways, the Cottonwood junior's game began to open up; she got back in the flow of the action and started getting easier looks down low. 

In the decade-plus that I've been covering this program I know firsthand the work that Cottonwood head basketball coach Teresa Soracco and AD Greg Southwick—himself a volunteer assistant on this Lady Colts team—have put in and the miles of court Coach Soracco has spent pacing the sideline in her trademark sweater blazer.